External (portable) recorder for EX3

mico said:
Uncompressed will be 10GB per minute so a 120GB SSD drive will give you approx. 12 minutes of shoot time. The Hyper only has a 1 hour internal battery. Factors I factor in regarding cost and extra equipment to lug around when out on the street shooting.
Click to expand...
It takes a 12volt input, and I would expect has a very low draw. There's no reason you couldn't power it with a NP1 velcroed to the side of it. Hell, the adapter cup I have for my Shure FP33 might be the right size.

As for drive size, definitely agree that 12 minutes of recording is not suitable for ENG style shooting.

For film style work, it's manageable.
 
Barry_Green said:
Well, any talk of the Ninja in this thread is a little silly anyway, because this thread was about using an external recorder with an EX3. An EX3 doesn't have an HDMI port, and a Ninja only has HDMI. The EX3 only has HD-SDI.

It would be far more suitable to be discussing the Samurai, or Nano, or PIX 240, or any of the HD-SDI recorders.
Click to expand...

Barry, very fine point. I forgot it was the EX3 thread when I mentioned the Ninja. Oops!!
 
Another factor then, is if you're using 120GB source drives in the BM, and you only have two... what do you do when it comes time to offload? It only takes 12 minutes to fill that drive to capacity, but to copy it to a cheap external drive might take an hour or more. Just something else to consider. For many workflows 12 minutes of footage an hour is plenty and two 120GB drives will be enough to get through an entire shoot day, but for other workflows it might be a dealkiller.
 
Quote:
"Barry, very fine point. I forgot it was the EX3 thread when I mentioned the Ninja. Oops!!"



Not really, Blackmagic also makes a SDI to Hdmi converter if you can't wait for the Samurai or the hyper to come out .
 
David Shapton said:
It depends how many hours of footage you want to store on SSDs. As I said, it's up to 100 times cheaper to work with ProRes on cheap, commodity 2.5" drives, which you can use in the field for editing on a laptop computer. Obviously it's not a fair comparison because the BM device is very different to the Ninja. I'm not criticising a competitor's product (no one's used it yet!) but the storage cost comparison is simply a fact.

Dave Shapton
Atomos
Click to expand...

Dave, when I do the numbers it's more like 184x, if not more.

Intel 320 series 600GB SSD, available for $1,000.
Consumer 3TB HD, available $150.

$1000/600GB= $1.6667 per gig, SSD
$150/3000GB= $0.05 per gig, HDD

1080 24p 80GB pro res, 445GB Uncompressed
Per minute, thats 1.33GB ProRes, 7.41GB Uncompressed.

$1.67x7.41 = $12.36 (per minute stored on SSD)
$0.05x1.33 = $0.07 (per minue stored on HDD)

I'll agree, the difference is tremendous. Towering. But it's a laughable comparison, because there's no reason I can't store uncompressed footage on the HDD drives. Hell, if I created RAID 0 sets I'd lose no space, and I could read them in realtime.

Doing this changes the math drastically:
$.05x7.41= $0.37 (per minute Uncompressed stored on HDD)
$.05x1.33= $0.07 (per minute ProRes stored on HDD)

Wow. $0.37 instead of $12.36???? That's like 33 times cheaper!!! Who in their right mind who wants to archive terabytes of uncompressed footage would do it on SSDs when its 33 times more expensive?

It's a preposterous suggestion.
 
Barry_Green said:
Another factor then, is if you're using 120GB source drives in the BM, and you only have two... what do you do when it comes time to offload? It only takes 12 minutes to fill that drive to capacity, but to copy it to a cheap external drive might take an hour or more. Just something else to consider. For many workflows 12 minutes of footage an hour is plenty and two 120GB drives will be enough to get through an entire shoot day, but for other workflows it might be a dealkiller.
Click to expand...

Barry,

You're absolutely right. My hypothetical purchasing scenario suggested an Indie filmmaker. Certainly, 24 minutes of media recording space is grossly inadaqueate for any ENG run and gun type work.

But that's the sort of work where I'd be more inclined to agree with Dave that the Pro Res is good enough. Now, a shooter who owned both a Samurai and a Hyperdeck Shuttle could simply use the Samurai for that ENG work. Those 2 120GB drives change from 24 minutes of record space to 3 hours. And, as Dave points out, you could directly load a cheap HDD instead to extend record times.

Personally, I think these recorders will be powerful in tandem.

You're right that Uncompressed transfers could pose a bottleneck, but that depends entirely on workflow. An external Firewire 800 Raid0 should transfer just slightly slower than realtime. A Raid0 on an external USB3 or Thunderbolt ought to transfer faster than realtime. Like, 1.3x or 1.5x. The bottleneck becomes the drives, a 2 drive HDD Raid0 could do about 200MB/sec.

This all comes down to workflow. And it doesn't matter what codec you choose, if you don't plan your workflow carefully, you're asking for trouble.
 
Samurai looks promising, but it's definately into serious budget (and a nice Sect 179 tax deduction). Were it not for the uncertainty of whether Adobe CS3 could handle the files, I'd be inclined to move in that direction, but since it's a product geared toward Apple users, it loses much of its appeal to those of us who edit on Windows and need a plain AVI file that Premiere and most any other editor understands.
 
Guys we're all doing a lot of speculation here. I guess what I'm trying to say is we do not know what type of drives will be needed for the Hyperdeck. What I do know is that I don't think those Intel 320 drives will be fast enough. I think they only go up to 165 MB/s. That is THEORETICAL and as you may know hard drives don't exactly always perform the way they ideally should. You would need to buy a faster (read: More expensive) 6 Gb/s drive to be on the safe side of realistic vs. burst/theoretical. And even then reports that I've read are that sustained write speeds drop towards the end of SSD. Or maybe even before the end. Rumors? I don't know I haven't worked with large SSD drives.

And I don't know about you but I don't keep just one copy of my footage. There's two copies on two different drives or on optical (BD-R) media. "If you want a redundant backup." Only a fool doesn't have at least one backup copy of cata. Because if that drive with all your footage on it fails...oops goes your footage. Imagine shooting a say $30,000 indie feature and the drive crashes. I hope you have production insurance for a whole re-shoot!

You can work around that if you encode to a codec after uncompressed capture. That's what I would do, encode to Cineform, DNx, ProRes, Canopus HQX, Yabadabadoo wrapped in an .gif container...whatever. But it is an extra step. I think the Hyperdeck may be before it's time, much like the HVX200 was with its 4GB cards ;-).

Dave, I was wondering if the Samurai or Ninja splits files into chunks. Or if there is an option to have something like meta linking of the files. This is one feature I love about the SxS encoding because files are split into 4GB chunks and then can be spread out on multiple DVD-Rs or Blu-ray discs for archiving.

Looks like there's an external recorder shoot-out brewing, Mr. Green. ;-)
 
Last edited:
Dave, I was wondering if the Samurai or Ninja splits files into chunks. Or if there is an option to have something like meta linking of the files. This is one feature I love about the SxS encoding because files are split into 4GB chunks and then can be spread out on multiple DVD-Rs or Blu-ray discs for archiving.
Click to expand...

We currently use FAT 32 because it's the most cross-platform-compatible way to do things, but we can and probably will change this in future. It's fine in practice because a) NLEs like FCP allow you to bring in the entire folder containing the multiple chunks and have them contiguously on the timeline and b) you could argue that if your drive is going to corrupt your material, it's better than it only corrupts a few minutes of (say) an interview than the whole thing.

I have to say though that - now that we've got a pretty large number of Ninja's out there - we've had virtually no reports of issues with spinning hard disk recording.

BTW - what you said about SSDs is true. We've obviously done a lot of testing, and you certainly can't take the theoretical speed as anything other than that.

Dave Shapton
Atomos
 
adamr316 said:
Guys we're all doing a lot of speculation here. I guess what I'm trying to say is we do not know what type of drives will be needed for the Hyperdeck. What I do know is that I don't think those Intel 320 drives will be fast enough. I think they only go up to 165 MB/s. That is THEORETICAL and as you may know hard drives don't exactly always perform the way they ideally should. You would need to buy a faster (read: More expensive) 6 Gb/s drive to be on the safe side of realistic vs. burst/theoretical.
Click to expand...

http://www.storagereview.com/intel_ssd_320_review_300gb

Independent bench test of a 300GB Intel 320 Series SSD, sustained sequential write speed of 225MB/sec, and a randomized write speed of 219MB/sec.

On a formatted drive for video use, we would be doing sequential writes.

Seems sufficient to me.
 
mico said:
Quote:
"Barry, very fine point. I forgot it was the EX3 thread when I mentioned the Ninja. Oops!!"



Not really, Blackmagic also makes a SDI to Hdmi converter if you can't wait for the Samurai or the hyper to come out .
Click to expand...

HOLD THE PHONE!!!! What is this? Can you elaborate please my internet friend?

Obviously it won't record audio. But is it reliable for visual? Could I realistically get this connector and a ninja and be happy???????? RSVP ASAP!! Thanks.
 
Nick Navaro said:
HOLD THE PHONE!!!! What is this? Can you elaborate please my internet friend?

Obviously it won't record audio. But is it reliable for visual? Could I realistically get this connector and a ninja and be happy???????? RSVP ASAP!! Thanks.
Click to expand...

Actually, it would carry both audio and video. The EX3 sends audio over SDI, and so does HDMI. So the adapters are able to trasmit both the incoming audio and video out on HDMI.

Unfortunately, they start at about $500, and they do need to be powered (low draw, battery adapters a plenty, but a hassle). This means you're right in the price range of a Samurai.

So I guess it depends how quickly you need this.

There's more than one make/model/manufacturer, but here's one from AJA: http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/478471-REG/AJA_HI5_Hi5_HD_SDI_SDI_to_HDMI.html

And one from Blackmagic: http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/produ...ic_Design_CONVMBSH_Mini_Converter_SDI_to.html
 
Sounds very interesting until you mention power supply. More hassle I don't need in the field. That's why I like the Samurai. 2 easy batteries. No hassle. Hmmmm....
 
Nick Navaro said:
HOLD THE PHONE!!!! What is this? Can you elaborate please my internet friend?

Obviously it won't record audio. But is it reliable for visual? Could I realistically get this connector and a ninja and be happy???????? RSVP ASAP!! Thanks.
Click to expand...

Both AJA and Blackmagic make an SDI to HDMI converters so yes you can use the Atomos Ninja with your EX3. Yes they both carry audio through the HDMI cable, 2 channels I believe. Abel cine tech sells a Nebtek battery plate kit adapter for the Blackmagic converter which ups the voltage so you can use 7.2v batteries to power the blackmagic device at 12v. For the AJA converter AJA makes a P-tap adapter cable that lets you use gold or V mount batteries.
 
Last edited:
David Shapton said:
We currently use FAT 32 because it's the most cross-platform-compatible way to do things, but we can and probably will change this in future. It's fine in practice because a) NLEs like FCP allow you to bring in the entire folder containing the multiple chunks and have them contiguously on the timeline and b) you could argue that if your drive is going to corrupt your material, it's better than it only corrupts a few minutes of (say) an interview than the whole thing.

I have to say though that - now that we've got a pretty large number of Ninja's out there - we've had virtually no reports of issues with spinning hard disk recording.

BTW - what you said about SSDs is true. We've obviously done a lot of testing, and you certainly can't take the theoretical speed as anything other than that.

Dave Shapton
Atomos
Click to expand...

FAT32...awesome. That's another thing I don't like about the Hyperdeck...it's a Mac-only format. So there's another $50 just to read the files on a PC.

Please don't get rid of the 4GB chunks. It'll enable users to backup 5 of those chunks to Blu-ray...otherwise we are stuck putting everything on hard drives that are formatted for larger files.
 
Viddovation said:
http://www.storagereview.com/intel_ssd_320_review_300gb

Independent bench test of a 300GB Intel 320 Series SSD, sustained sequential write speed of 225MB/sec, and a randomized write speed of 219MB/sec.

On a formatted drive for video use, we would be doing sequential writes.

Seems sufficient to me.
Click to expand...

I hope they're right because that would be good news. I guess we'll only know when people get their hands on these things.

---------------------------------
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncompressed_video

1080i and 1080p HDTV uncompressed

8 bit @ 1920 x 1080 @ 24fps = 95 MB per/sec, or 334 GB per/hr.
10 bit @ 1920 x 1080 @ 24fps = 127 MB per/sec, or 445 GB per/hr.


8 bit @ 1920 x 1080 @ 25fps = 99 MB per/sec, or 348 GB per/hr.
10 bit @ 1920 x 1080 @ 25fps = 132 MB per/sec, or 463 GB per/hr.


8 bit @ 1920 x 1080 @ 29.97fps = 119 MB per/sec, or 417 GB per/hr.
10 bit @ 1920 x 1080 @ 29.97fps = 158 MB per/sec, or 556 GB per/hr.

---------------------------------------------------

Yep, looks like it should be good. So we're talking ~ $540 per drive and a 12v battery or two (approx. $50/ea.. For documentary work I'd get at least 3 drives. Actually to save a few bucks I'd get a 600GB and a 300GB. So that's about 40 minutes/drive. Then $300 Cineform Neo software and an eSATA dock (approx. $40)

$1,042 (600 GB drive) + $328 + $540 + ($50 x 2) + $300 + $40 = ~ $2,350.00 .

Samurai with drives is cheaper (on the 600GB alone it'd have 5.5+ hours of the highest quality codec, ProRes HQ video) and much more portable (no run and gun with the Hyperdeck) but this would give the option to transcode to whatever format. You know what though? For now both of these pieces of hardware are vaporware. So I'm just going to enjoy the summer, shoot with XDCam EX 35 and see where the dust settles, hehehe.
 
For now both of these pieces of hardware are vaporware.
Click to expand...
Neither is shipping, but the Samurai's not vapourware. We showed it working at NAB, in its pre-production form. And it's closely related to the Ninja, which we've shipped in large numbers - so we know that it is a proven concept. All the difficult stuff was done and dusted with the Ninja.

Dave Shapton
President
Atomos EMEA
 
David Shapton said:
Neither is shipping, but the Samurai's not vapourware. We showed it working at NAB, in its pre-production form. And it's closely related to the Ninja, which we've shipped in large numbers - so we know that it is a proven concept. All the difficult stuff was done and dusted with the Ninja.

Dave Shapton
President
Atomos EMEA
Click to expand...

Sorry about that, terminology error. By vaporware I meant that neither is released yet so at this point we'll all just have to wait and see.
 
David Shapton said:
Neither is shipping, but the Samurai's not vapourware. We showed it working at NAB, in its pre-production form. And it's closely related to the Ninja, which we've shipped in large numbers - so we know that it is a proven concept. All the difficult stuff was done and dusted with the Ninja.

Dave Shapton
President
Atomos EMEA
Click to expand...

Hi David, thanks for posting! If the Samurai was shipping I would be an eager little Ninja and get it!...any ship dates????

Also in you opinion, what flavour of Prores is similar to EXcam's 35mbs codec. I know your's is 4:2:2 10bit etc and better straight up but considering storage would the low res Prores codec be similar or what? I am thinking of long form filming, events etc and the Excam is pretty good compression wise where prores will chew through the gb's.

Evo
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top